September 11th

After eight years, the sobriety of this anniversary has not really diminished for me. The images I saw on live television that morning are still very clear and very real in my mind. I do not watch replayed footage of the events even this many years afterward. It's too disturbing. (I now sort of understand why my Granddaddy wouldn't watch even mildly violent scenes on television programs 40 years after his service in WWII.) Many thoughts come to mind about the events and aftermath of this day in 2001 – the heroism, the horror, the reprehensibility – but I haven’t the ability to put those thoughts into words. And even if I did, the expression of them would bring little to no comfort or closure for me. However, what I can do, and what I believe is really better is to remember not the events, but the people who died and their families & friends left behind.
Fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins – these were taken away. The love of someone’s life, the closest friend – they too were stolen. A co-worker, acquaintance, neighbor – lost. For them, there was an end. For those left behind, it was a beginning of loss, pain, and remembrance.
So today, I will remember the ones left behind as they remember the ones they lost. And as I remember, I pray. I pray that as this anniversary comes and goes again, they would be comforted; that though the pain and loss is great, the feeling of it would not be; that there is fond remembrance of those lost; that they are surrounded with love and support from those that are near and they would gather strength from it.